Friends in Need

I have realized that sometimes we have opportunities that teach us a good deal about our friends and ourselves. Most of the times these opportunities present themselves as a crisis and not the good kind - like choosing between going out with Antonio Banderas or Brad Pitt or whether to spend lottery winnings on a house with ample stash storage or victims of the cyclone in Mynamar. The knitting group I am a member of has had just such an opportunity.

After hosting us at the luxury cabin in Vevey, E’s husband suffered a major heart attack. He was air lifted to Louisville for treatment. What happened next demonstrated to me why the knitting group is so important to me. Through e-mail and phone calls, we did our best to share information and what things we could do to be supportive of E and her family.

Although we couldn’t physically be there with E, we kept her and her husband close in our thoughts. We thought of ways to make life at home during recovery easier. Most of all, it was important to all of us that E know that we cared what happened to her and her husband.

It struck me that we are more than a group of people who knit together. We are a community of people that knitting brought together. I know it may seem rather cheesey to say that, perhaps more cheesey to believe it, but I think that it is true.

I will be so bold to say that what distinguishes the fad of knitting from the knitting lifestyle may be found in the knitting group. In our knitting group we have a diversity of political beliefs, religious practice, education, socio-economic level, marital status, life stage, and many, many other things that make us different. In knitting, we have found the common ground to build relationship.

In the beginning, it was just about the knitting and the yarn. Over time, it has become something else. Knitting and yarn gave us an introduction to each other. The knitting projects gave us opportunities to talk about our lives and things that mattered.

Until now, we haven’t had the opportunity to test what we have built one week at a time. Now we know. I, for one, have a deeper appreciation of my fellow knitters. I am humbled by their concern and compassion. Most of all, I feel damn lucky to count each of them as friends.